It’s Monday, December 30, A.D. 2019. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I’m Adam McManus.
By Adam McManus (adam@theworldview.com)
ISIS terrorists beheaded 11 Christian hostages on Christmas Day
Bloodthirsty ISIS terrorists beheaded 11 male Christian hostages on Christmas Day in Nigeria, reports the BBC.
The militants said in a sickening video that the mass killing was in revenge for the deaths “of our leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”. Claiming to show their captives’ execution, the clip was produced by ISIS’s media arm, Amaq.
Baghdadi died in a US raid on a compound near the village of Barisha on October 26.
We place our hope in the promise of Proverbs 21:15. “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.”
200 Evangelical leaders to Christianity Today: Name Dem candidate you support for president
In a letter to Timothy Dalrymple, the president of Christianity Today magazine, nearly 200 evangelical faith leaders condemned both its editorial calling for the removal of President Donald Trump from office and its editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, for dismissing evangelicals who oppose his views on the matter as being “far right”, reports Fox News.
The faith leaders said that the editorial “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.”
The letter states, “We are, in fact, not ‘far-right’ evangelicals as characterized by the author. Rather, we are Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our president has sought our advice as his administration has advanced policies that protect the unborn, and promote religious freedom.”
The letter also assumes that Christianity Today will support a Democrat in the 2020 presidential election, and issues a challenge to publicly declare which Democrat they will support.
Senator Lindsay Graham to Dems: Impeachment is a “dead cat”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, busted out an unusual idiom in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo as he demanded that Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turn President Donald Trump’s articles of impeachment over to the Senate.
GRAHAM: “To my Democratic colleagues, impeachment is a dead cat. Stop playing with it. Bury it; it’s going nowhere.”
(“If you call these witnesses who work for the president, after he’s invoked executive privilege, if you deny him his day in court, then you’re abusing the constitutional rights of Donald Trump as president and you’re putting the entire presidency at risk. … They impeached him for exercising his legal rights. I hope the senators will not vote to compel witnesses before the court determines whether or not there’s executive privilege.”)
Biden would not testify in Senate trial if subpoenaed
In an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board on Friday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said he will not testify at the Senate impeachment trial for President Donald Trump.
Here’s Des Moines Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter.
HUNTER: “Do you stand by your earlier statements that you wouldn’t comply if you were subpoenaed to testify and impeachment trial before the Senate?”
BIDEN: “Correct. And the reason I wouldn’t is because it’s all designed to deal with Trump doing what he’s done his whole life, trying to take the focus off him. The issue is not what I did. This is all about a diversion. And we play his game all the time. He’s done it his whole career. I’m very proud of the job I did. I never, never, never moved off of dealing with corruption there.”
HUNTER: “Doesn’t that position you as if you’re defying a subpoena, putting yourself above the law?”
BIDEN: “Let’s say I voluntarily just said, ‘Let me go make my case.’ What are you going to cover? You’re going to cover, for three weeks, anything I said, and he’s going to get away. You guys buy into it all the time. Not a joke. Think about it. As we say in my church, ‘examine your conscience’. Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t testify, if you thought I should.”
Texas church leaves Methodist denomination over homosexuality
A United Methodist Church congregation in Texas, with approximately 2,800 members, has voted to leave the mainline denomination because of its debate over homosexuality, reports the Christian Post.
Grace Fellowship UMC of Katy voted December 15 to leave the UMC due to the divisive debate on whether to amend the Book of Discipline to remove language calling homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
Jim Leggett, the founding pastor of Grace Fellowship, said, “In the last year, it has become clear to us that despite having biblical standards of morality on paper in the denomination’s Book of Discipline, the leadership of the United Methodist Church is unable or unwilling to live by those standards.”
Nike transgender employee sues over being “misgendered”
Jazz Lyles, a former Nike employee who was born female but identifies as “transmasculine”, filed a $1.1 million lawsuit against the company last week, claiming gender identity-based harassment due to the use of wrong pronouns, reports ChristianHeadlines.com.
She was a computer engineer at Nike from May 2017 to September 2018 and prefers the pronouns “they/them/their”. She said she was often “misgendered” by employees.
CA church pays for $5 million of medical debt for 5,000 households
And finally, Christian Assembly Church in California has successfully purchased and cleared over $5 million in medical debt for more than 5,000 households in what one of their pastors called a “Christmas gift,” reports the Christian Post.
Tom Hughes, co-senior pastor of Christian Assembly, said, “We are canceling all of the unpaid medical debt $5.3 million as a Christmas gift to all of the poor in all 28 neighborhoods.”
The church worked with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit based in New York that works to buy medical debt for pennies on the dollar through the collection system and then forgives the debt.
Mark 12: 30-31 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
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And that’s The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Monday, December 30th in the year of our Lord 2019. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I’m Adam McManus (adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
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Gingrich: Trump is gaining ground, Democrats are losing ground
FOX News contributor and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Democrats are admitting the case they have is so weak that they are afraid to send it to the Senate.
GINGRICH: “They don’t think they have enough evidence to have any chance at all in the Senate. And they’re buying time to see if they can create more evidence. They’re admitting that the case they have is so weak, they don’t want to send it over to the Senate.
“The more they behave politically, the more they devalue the entire impeachment process. … They talk impeachment, he talks jobs, day by day. He’s gaining ground and they’re losing ground.”